Sunday is the anniversary of the death of Pedro Arrupe, SJ, superior general of the Jesuits from 1965-83.  He was a charismatic man who led the Jesuits through a difficult time of transition.  After he suffered a debilitating stroke he wrote this wonderful prayer:

More than ever I find myself in the hands of God. This is what I have wanted all my life from my youth. But now there is a difference; the initiative is entirely with God. It is indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself so totally in God’s hands.

You can read about Arrupe here.  This video is the first in a series produced by Georgetown University.  The first couple of minutes show his very poignant farewell in 1983. (Click here to watch it on YouTube.)

An exhibition of paintings by James Hasse, SJ opened last weekend at the St. Louis University Museum of Art. Fr. Hasse’s work reflects biblical themes and the African-American experience. Some of his work can be viewed in a slideshow from the exhibition and also online here at the University of Dayton.

Fr. Hasse says, “I believe that we are all God’s Work of Art, the Body of Christ, living Gospel, walking, singing, dancing Sacraments. My paintings are an attempt to give visual expression to these realities. Scripture furnishes my subject matter; the people furnish the soul and beauty, I furnish the craftsmanship.”

The exhibition will also feature paintings by Judge Nathan B. Young, the first African-American municipal judge in St. Louis.  It runs through March 4.

Larry Gillick, SJ is a special Jesuit.  Blind since childhood, he has been a Jesuit for 50 years and has had a varied and fruitful career.  Among other accomplishments, he is one of the authors of Retreat in the Real World, a popular adaptation of the Spiritual Exercises.  He does retreat work all over the US, and lives in the Jesuit community at Creighton University.

In this video, he talks about how God called him to be a priest.  (Click here to watch it on YouTube.)

Our newest blogger here at dotMagis is Becky Eldredge, a writer, speaker, and spiritual director in training who lives in Athens, GA, with her husband and two children.  Becky has been active in ministry for 14 years, primarily in retreat work and adult faith formation.  She is currently the coordinator of the Partner Program at Charis Ministries, which gives retreats for young adults in 26 cities.

Becky is working on her certificate in spiritual direction at Spring Hill College.  In her free moments she writes the blog Everything Is Holy Now.  We’ve been working for a while to get Becky to join us.  She’s finally here. She will start blogging tomorrow.

A couple of Jesuit editors have noted that the death of Steve Jobs elicited emotion akin to the to the feelings religious believers have for saints.  Jim Martin, SJ, author of My Life with the Saints, draws seven parallels between Jobs’ life and those of saints.  One of them:

He was the object of a cult. By this I don’t mean the common definition of a “cult” (a group of crazies surrounding an even crazier leader).  Rather, the “cult” that surrounds the saint (and that is the term used) is simply a group of admirers who follow carefully the saint’s teachings, study his or life and meditate on his or her writings.

Antonio Spadaro, SJ, editor of of the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica, compared Jobs to St. Ignatius:

In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius wrote that one way of making an important choice is to examine how one would go about making that decision if he knew he were about to die.  Jobs told the new graduates in 2005: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”

Fr. Martin and Fr. Spadaro were both careful to note that they did not claim that Steve Jobs was actually a saint.

Image by aaipodpics under Creative Commons license.

In America, Timothy O’Brien, SJ, writes about the poet and memoirist Mary Karr about the Spiritual Exercises and Ignatian spirituality: “If you live in New York City, where it’s 105 degrees, I have to walk out of this apartment wondering where I’m going to be of service.”

I’ve written about Mary Karr before. Her memoir Lit is a great story of recovery and spiritual awakening.  Her poetry is searing in its intensity.  Here are a few lines from her poem “Disgraceland:”

Eventually, I lurched out
to kiss the wrong mouths, get stewed,

and sulk around. Christ always stood
to one side with a glass of water.

Read the rest of the poem here.

Daniel Berrigan, SJ, celebrated his 90th birthday yesterday.  We older folk remember him as a charismatic anti-war activist in the 60s and 70s.  He was a powerful advocate for non-violence and social justice for many years.

He is also a poet of some renown.  Here is one of his lyrics.

Miracles

Were I God almighty, I would ordain, rain fall lightly where old men trod, no death in childbirth, neither infant nor mother, ditches firm fenced against the errant blind, aircraft come to ground like any feather.

No mischance, malice, knives.
Tears dried. Would resolve all
flaw and blockage of mind
that makes us mad, sets lives awry.

So I pray, under
the sign of the world’s murder, the ruined son;
why are you silent?
feverish as lions
hear us in the world,
caged, devoid of hope.

Still, some redress and healing.
The hand of an old woman
turns gospel page;
it flares up gently, the sudden tears of Christ.

Iowa newspaper editor and brewer J. Wilson ended a 46-day Lenten fast during which  drank only beer and ate no solid food.  Wilson, a devout Christian, ended his fast early Sunday morning with a bacon smoothie.  Since Ash Wednesday, his sole nourishment has been Illuminator Doppelbock beer, brewed from his own recipe.  Early in Lent he drank four glasses a day, but had to increae it to five glasses to keep up his strength.

Wilson calls it a fast where he consumed only “liquid bread and water. “He  blogged about his experience at Diary of a Part-time Monk.

David Fleming, SJ, a prolific writer and esteemed spiritual director, died on Tuesday in St. Louis.  He was a great popular interpreter of Ignatian Spirituality.  I worked with him on his book, What Is Ignatian Spirituality?, which you can read here.  Many of his articles are on this website, including “God Calls, We Respond,” “Prayer Is a Conversation,” and “Pray with Your Imagination.”

Jim Martin published a fine post about David Fleming at the America magazine blog.  May he rest in peace.

The Archdiocese of Chicago is opening the legal process for the canonization of Father Augustus Tolton, a late 19th century priest, and the first who was African-American.

The story is good on so many levels, but I’ll focus on two.  The first is that it is communities who make saints.  God’s work on us as a master craftsman is to shape us into a servant of those communities into which he sends us; sainthood is never for ourselves alone.  And practically speaking, communities have to be the ones who advance saints’ causes.

The second lesson from Fr. Tolton’s life is that communities are awfully hard places to live out one’s sanctity.  The Catholic Church of his day was grotesquely divided between the races.  Blacks were often relegated to the balcony and sometimes could not even receive communion because it was forbidden to kneel at the rail next to whites.  Father Tolton ministered wherever he was sent, often eliciting scorn from fellow Catholics, fellow priests, and even bishops.  And yet he served faithfully.  We do well to remember how Mother Teresa’s observation applies to figures like Tolton: our job is not to be successful, but faithful.

My prayer, in remembrance of Father Tolton, is this: may God send us to the communities for whom we must be leaven, and may our loving acts of dying to self give rise to the unfolding of his kingdom even when we can’t see it.